Manager, Mobile Software Engineering

OVERVIEW A thriving, mission-driven multimedia organization, NPR produces award-winning news, information, and music programming in partnership with hundreds of independent public radio stations across the nation. The NPR audience values information, creativity, curiosity, and social responsibility – and our employees do too. We are innovators and leaders in diverse fields, from journalism and digital media to IT and development. Every day, our employees and member stations touch the lives of millions worldwide.  Across our organization, we’re building a workplace where collaboration is essential, diverse voices are heard, and inclusion is the key to our success. We are committed to doing the right thing in our journalism and in every role at NPR .  This means that integrity, adherence to our ethical standards, and compliance with legal obligations are fundamental responsibilities for every employee at NPR. Intro to Position Do you want to play a major role in the future of public media? Do you have a passion for mobile technology, open-source software, and serving the public? As our Mobile Software Engineering Manager on the Audience Technology team, you will lead a highly collaborative team of mobile software engineers building, testing, and delivering features for NPR's flagship mobile applications. You will partner closely with Product, Design, Data, and Editorial teams to identify priorities, architect new capabilities, and continuously improve mobile user experiences. In addition to internal team leadership, you will serve as the technical lead overseeing external vendor relationships, agency partnerships, and staff augmentation teams. In this role, you will act as a primary champion of team health, engineering excellence, vendor accountability, and inclusive career development. Responsibilities People Leadership & Coaching: Manage, mentor, and coach a team of Mobile Software Engineers, actively investing in their career growth, professional development, and psychological safety. Talent Acquisition & Onboarding: Lead recruitment and hiring efforts for software engineering vacancies on your team, and manage the structured onboarding and training of new engineering staff. Vendor & Agency Management : Oversee external software vendors, development agencies, and staff augmentation contractors. Define statements of work (SOWs), monitor deliverable milestones, enforce SLA quality targets, and manage budget utilization for external technical engagements. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with product managers, UX designers, data analysts, and editorial partners across all stages of the product development lifecycle. Agile Delivery Management: Lead the technical planning, scoping, and execution of future software projects, facilitating Agile ceremonies (stand-ups, backlog refinements, sprint planning, and retrospectives) as needed. Technical Quality & Code Review: Conduct thorough software design and code reviews, providing constructive and substantive feedback to maintain code health, architectural integrity, and security standards. Continuous Process Improvement: Analyze, propose, and implement engineering workflow improvements to enhance the speed, safety, and quality of software delivery. Developer Experience Automation: Identify common engineering blockers and pain points, writing helper tools or automation scripts to optimize team developer experience (DX). Incident & Production Support: Oversee and coordinate the team's response to critical mobile production bugs or infrastructure incidents. Vendor & Contributor Management: Coordinate workflows, code standards, and deliverables for external contributors and specialized development vendors. The above duties and responsibilities are not an exhaustive list of required responsibilities, duties and skills. Other duties may be assigned, and this job description can be modified at any time. Minimum Qualifications  At least 3+ years of experience directly managing mobile software engineers within an agile organization. 2+ years of experience overseeing external engineering vendors, contractors, or development agencies (including managing technical SOWs, deliverables, and code integration quality). Prior experience as an individual contributor in engineering, testing, and shipping robust code for at least one large-scale mobile application. Hands-on proficiency in modern mobile platform languages, specifically Swift/Objective-C (iOS) or Kotlin/Java (Android). Strong working knowledge of native mobile release infrastructures (such as Apple App Store Connect/provisioning profiles or Google Play Console/staged rollouts). Hands-on experience working with modern version control systems (primarily Git). Demonstrated experience collaborating within cross-functional Agile/Scrum product teams. Preferred Qualifications Professional experience managing both internal employees and external agency vendors/contractors. Experience with native mobile media streaming frameworks (such as AVKit/AVFoundation for iOS, or Media3/ExoPlayer for Android). Familiarity with modern responsive design architectures (SwiftUI/Combine or Jetpack Compose/Coroutines), design patterns (MVVM), and automotive platforms (CarPlay/Android Auto). Required Skills/Competencies Technical Design & Communication: Ability to translate complex technical concepts, system architectures, and engineering trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders. Inclusive Leadership: Demonstrated competency in fostering an equitable, supportive, and inclusive team culture. Systemic Problem Solving: Strong analytical skill set with an "automation-first" mindset for resolving manual bottlenecks and production issues. User-Centric Empathy: A strong focus on quality and empathy for end-users, ensuring highly performant, accessible mobile application experiences. Agile Operations: Deep fluency in Agile methodologies and software proj